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Masters Thesis MASTERS THESIS For Professor Dent By Stefan Molyneux Summer 1994 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................................................4 SENSUALISM .............................................................................................................................................................5 SENSUAL METAPHYSICS.......................................................................................................................................7 SENSUAL EPISTEMOLOGY .................................................................................................................................10 SUPRA-SENSUALISM.............................................................................................................................................19 SUPRA-SENSUAL METAPHYSICS ......................................................................................................................19 SUPRA-SENSUAL EPISTEMOLOGY...................................................................................................................21 SENSUAL ETHICS...................................................................................................................................................26 SENSUAL POLITICS...............................................................................................................................................27 SUPRA-SENSUAL ETHICS ....................................................................................................................................29 SUPRA-SENSUAL POLITICS ................................................................................................................................30 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW ....................................................................................................................................32 PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS...............................................................................................................................51 IMMANUEL KANT..................................................................................................................................................52 HEGEL.......................................................................................................................................................................59 LOCKE.......................................................................................................................................................................66 HOBBES.....................................................................................................................................................................81 CONCLUSION ..........................................................................................................................................................89 BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................................................................................................................................96 2 “Rationality ex post facto -- Whatever lives long is gradually so saturated with reason that its irrational origins become improbable. Does not almost every accurate history of the origin of something sound paradoxical and sacrilegious to our feelings? Doesn’t the good historian contradict all the time?” Nietzsche, The Dawn (1881) “He sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that would have its rea- soned philosophy and its ordered principles, and find in the spiritualizing of the senses its highest realization.” Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray 3 Introduction The thesis of this paper is that there are two opposing philosophical paradigms in Western history. These paradigms originate in metaphysical axioms, axioms which in turn condition opposing epistemologies, ethics and political theories. The purpose of this paper is to trace the logic of these principles, both internally and with reference to four major philosophers: Kant, Hegel, Locke and Hobbes. The first section of the paper will outline the philosophical reasonings of both paradigms; the second will show how these paradigms have manifested themselves in Western history; the third will show these paradigms at work in the writings of four major philosophers. The two approaches are referred to as sensualism and supra-sensualism . These terms rep- resent the following philosophical approaches: Sensualism Supra-sensualism Metaphysics Objective reality Subjective reality Epistemology Empirical rationality Revelation Ethics Individual rights Despotic will Politics Limited democracy Totalitarianism 4 The first section will analyze the metaphysics and epistemology of the sensual para- digm. SENSUALISM Human consciousness being neither automatic nor infallible, it needs guiding principles to help it determine truth from falsehood. Consciousness errs, therefore philosophy is necessary. In the sensual paradigm, philosophy is a set of principles and procedures designed to aid consciousness attain and maintain truth, just as medicine is a set of principles and procedures designed to aid the body attain and maintain health. The central premise of sensualist philosophy is that all processes of consciousness are sub- ject to error . We will call this premise the Uncertainty Principle . The Uncertainty Prin- ciple contains two premises: the first is that error occurs, and the second is that error may be detected by comparing it with a standard of accuracy. The concept of error thus requires the concept of accuracy; if the mind never erred, or always erred, or had no ca- pacity to tell truth from error, it would have no need of philosophy. The Uncertainty Principle thus holds the implicit premise that error can be perceived and corrected by some method. 5 In the sensualist paradigm, the discipline of philosophy is directly analogous to the dis- cipline of medicine. We know that the body has erred by comparing it to a standard of functioning, or the purpose of the body. The purpose of the body is survival; we know that it errs when it fails to fulfill its purpose. Similarly, consciousness may err, and we know that it errs by contrasting it with a standard of functioning, or the purpose of con- sciousness. According to sensualism, the purpose of consciousness is to aid the survival of the body, thus it errs when it fails to fulfill its purpose. How does sensualism know that the purpose of consciousness is to aid the survival of the body? The sensualist approach to life is that consciousness is a physical process, an effect of the physical brain. Being physical, consciousness cannot survive without the body; being alive, it wishes to survive, thus aiding the survival of the body is its highest standard of functioning. Human life, of course, is a choice ; one need not live ; yet, if one desires life, one has chosen a value, a preference for life, over an opposite value, a preference for death. In the sen- sualist paradigm, the attainment of the value of life requires certain specific choices and actions, i.e. one cannot choose to eat sand or drink sunlight. One cannot attain the value of life by throwing oneself off a cliff. No action is required if one’s choice is death; one need only sit and starve. If one chooses life, however, specific actions are required. The purpose of consciousness is to determine the best methods by which life may be se- cured; the purpose of philosophy is to identify general principles from successful expe- 6 riences in order to apply them to new situations, plan for the future, pass them on to new generations, etc. Philosophy, to detect and correct error, must recognize a hierarchy of values. The first and highest value of sensual philosophy is the existence of human life, for without hu- man life, no values can exist. The syllogistic expression of this is: 1) Philosophy requires values 2) Values cannot exist without life 3) Therefore the highest value of philosophy must be the existence of life. Life is a process , for all its operations involve time. Thus the values of philosophy must be those processes which aid the continued success of life, just as the values of medicine must be those processes which aid the continued success of the body. For medicine, the sum purpose of those values is health ; for philosophy they are truth . Sensual Metaphysics Sensualism perceives rational consciousness as a physical process, thus its dependence on the body is absolute. The mind is an effect of the body, thus the highest value of philosophy is derived in the following manner: 7 1. The highest value of philosophy is the existence of life 2. Life cannot exist without the body 3. Thus physical health is the highest value of philosophy. Thus no philosophical value may contradict the medical value of health . Because truth cannot exist without life , life is the highest standard of truth, the first and final arbiter of value . Truth, in other words, is that which is good for life . For sensualism, health is a necessary but not sufficient means to the end of truth; for medicine, health is an end in and of itself. Sensualism holds the relationship between the mind and the body as absolute: because consciousness is a physical process, it is subject to the physical laws of cause and effect; i.e. it cannot possess knowledge of something without some form of experience of that something. Because the mind is completely dependent on the body, all experience must enter the mind through
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